Eyre Lines

In small group last week, we were looking at Matthew 14:22-33, which is the story of Jesus walking across the rough waters of the Sea of Galilee to the apostles in their boat, Peter asking Jesus to call him to walk on water, and Peter’s limited success. Limited in that while it initially worked, Peter became frightened and began to sink, and needed rescuing.

I commented that I had difficulty with this passage, as I could not put myself into Peter’s position. Asked why, I said I didn’t believe in the supernatural. There was a silence, and then someone said “But, you’re a Christian?” Others chipped in, and the moment passed, but I felt I hadn’t dealt with this well; in addition, I notice that we’re going to be looking specifically at the question of belief and faith next week. I think it worth clarifying the position.

Accurately, I don’t believe in physical miracles, that is to say of the “walking on water” or “water into wine” variety. Healings and exorcisms are a different matter; I have seen cures through faith, and have talked to other people’s demons as well as my own (and you should read that very metaphorically!). Communications with God are also very much another matter, including tangible apparitions. I don’t think anything physical is actually happening in these; what is happening is changes in people’s consciousnesses and the results of that, so far as I’m concerned.

Against that, I don’t actually disbelieve miracle stories as such. As miracles are, by definition, exceptionally unlikely events, I would not expect the normal rules of how things work necessarily to apply to them if they did happen, and so the presumption that everything always works along naturalistic lines would be too strong – it definitely works along naturalistic lines almost always, but the absolute statement is one which I would think it foolish to make.  I might like to be able to believe in miracles the way many of those in my faith community do, but I can’t. The nearest I can get is suspension of disbelief, an acceptance that maybe, just maybe, things will not be the way every ounce of my rational thinking says it will be.

Thus, in Peter’s position, if I stepped out of the boat I would with huge confidence expect to sink.

But that isn’t the only reason why I couldn’t put myself in Peter’s position. As someone else noted in the group, there was no obvious reason for Peter to walk on water. From Peter’s point of view, he was putting himself in danger in order that God could save him miraculously, and in Matthew 4:1-17 we have seen Jesus tempted. Note particularly verses 5-7, where Jesus is invited to endanger himself and trust in a miracle, and responds that you should not put the Lord to the test. Peter is going completely against this principle. I’ve spent years training myself not to do that, after a certain youthful enthusiasm many years ago – though that never went quite as far as one of those preaching the previous Sunday on the subject, who did actually try to walk on water…

That said, I have occasionally hoped for a miracle without any belief that one would occur, but only when every other avenue was closed to me, and only a miracle would suffice. On a very few occasions, things have, to my amazement, worked out – not always in any way which I might have asked for, but worked out nonetheless. I can’t, however, say that any of those required a physical miracle, though they have certainly required psychological ones more than once.

The thing I’ve increasingly come to recognise as I’ve studied scripture over the years is that the real message of the miraculous stories is not in the fact that a miracle has occurred, it’s something else, a deeper message which can be found (and sometimes more than one). I don’t need to believe in the occurrence of the miracle to see the deeper message. In this case it’s that one should have absolute trust in Jesus; once Peter’s trust faltered, he was in trouble.

For me, indeed, miracles which just show that Jesus (or Peter, or Paul) was something really special don’t do the job they were supposed to. Rowan Atkinson has an extremely funny satire on this attitude on You Tube. I hope readers will see this not as lampooning Jesus, but as lampooning the attitude of some, at least, of his followers. I’ve done enough studying to know that a large number of famous people of the first century and before (and a few after that) had miracle stories attached to them; the New Testament is not unique or even particularly unusual in attributing miracles to its leading characters, and (for instance) Alexander the Great, Hippocrates and Augustus Caesar have such stories, as do quite a few rabbis of the first to fourth centuries, such as Eliezer and Honi the Circle Drawer. If I accept miracles in the New Testament, I have no way of rejecting them in (for instance) the Talmud, or the Koran. Those in the Gospels, at least, do have messages beyond just “this was a very important man whom you should pay attention to” – and I don’t need miracle stories to pay attention to Jesus.

Indeed, going back to the story, if I were in that boat on the sea of Galilee and rather than asking to walk out to Jesus, Jesus asked me to step out of the boat, I would probably do that. I would expect to sink, but hope not to – and in any event trust that what he asked me to do was the right thing. Even if I drowned.

I say “probably”. I am only too conscious of the fact that I have other allegiances as well as to God and Jesus which, at least to date, I have not been willing to set aside and follow the Great Commandments to the letter, or the injunction to the rich young man. (I don’t qualify as rich by the standards of my immediate society, but by world standards there’s no doubt of it). My other allegiances are to my wife and family, and unlike the disciples, I balk at leaving them in order to follow Jesus.

But, to date, all I have is scriptural statements. If I were to have a personal message? I don’t know. I’d certainly argue, taking my cue from plenty of Biblical figures from Abraham onwards, but might obey nonetheless.

So, may be I can put myself in Peter’s shoes (at least when they were dry) after all. I feel the statement “Oh ye of little faith” could be directed squarely at me. As I’ve blogged before, maybe that makes me merely an aspiring Christian, or a not-very-good Christian. But I think, for some value of “Christian”, that’s what I am.

From editing work:-

“There is a story of a salt doll who encounters the ocean. It is strange and foreign; the doll cannot identify with it. “Touch and see,” said the ocean. The doll touched the ocean and gained knowledge from the experience, though a bit of the doll dissolved into the ocean. Wanting more, the doll touches again, and again. Going deeper and deeper, the doll experiences more and more. Finally dissolving in the depths, the doll and the ocean simply say “I am!” Such is the experience of holy union.”

David Moffett-Moore, “Pathways to Prayer”, Energion Publications – forthcoming.

I don’t usually stray into issues around the acceptance (or otherwise) of homosexuality and same sex marriage. However, my attention has been drawn to a couple of really excellent blog posts.

The first of these is from Larry Behrendt, on Jewish-Christian intersections. Always stimulating and thought-provoking, Larry concentrates on issues around how and why Judaism and Christianity parted company, and what we can now do to overcome the historically nasty relationship between the two ( for which most of the blame lies with Christianity). In it, Larry points out that there is a good argument for saying that the “clobber text” in respect of homosexuality in Leviticus 20 can reasonably be read as indicating “taboo” rather than anything stronger, and as being culturally and temporally specific and not of general application; he points out (particularly interesting to me) that the same word, to-ehvah used of whatever is targeted by Lev. 20:13, is used of lending at interest and of investing for profit.

Now, if that be the case, using the usual biblical translation of “to-ehvah”, I can happily proclaim that capitalism is an abomination which should be taboo. This is going to preach!

The second is from J. Daniel Kirk, an evangelical professor at a fairly conservative seminary. Now, I like listening to Daniel (who is currently a regular contributor to Homebrewed Christianity’s Lectiocast, a resource for preachers working from the Lectionary). I like reading him. But he comes from a far more conservative strain of Christianity than I can really be comfortable with.

Here, however, it seems to me that he hits the issue squarely on the nail, and with superb force of argument. Certain people, he starts out, cannot be part of the community of God. Liberals (theological and social) should not stop reading there… the argument proceeds to make the point that the trajectory of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament regularly sets aside older exclusivist statements and replaces them with new, inclusivist ones, and asks why we cannot do the same here, despite Daniel thinking that the “clobber text” scriptures probably do actually target homosexuality in general rather than, as various very inventive interpreters have been doing recently, merely certain specific actions. I am still not certain I can go along with that portion of Larry’s argument, although I do find the in-depth look at the translation of Lev. 20 very interesting.

One reason why I have not commented is that about 40 years ago, I found myself asked by a friend, who is now in a same-sex marriage, to look at those clobber texts and tell him what I thought they meant for his clearly inborn sexual orientation, as he was a committed Christian. Much as I would have liked to reassure him, I cane to much the same conclusion as Daniel does – although you can argue about them, they probably evidence an exclusion of anyone with same-sex orientation both in Leviticus/Deuteronomy and in Paul’s letters, and said that I could wish that he might consider a different religious tradition (at the time, I was still exploring many religious traditions and could best have been described as a freelance monotheist of the panentheist variety). It was not possible at the time, and all I could suggest was that he reject those passages as not applicable. I did not see the internal justification which Daniel exposes for considering them as “timed out”.

Now, both Larry, in his more general thinking, and Daniel have provided ways in which the deselection of these passages as relevant to us here and now can be justified, and add to my earlier conclusion – that Christianity understands God as loving before anything else, and that he would not support the condemnation of exclusion of anyone on the basis of something they were born with. They have done it without the need to hold anything other than the highest view of scripture, as well. My thanks to both – and I wish I’d had their analyses 40 years ago!

Last Sunday, I heard a sermon in which was the comment “We have a sign on our door saying ‘No admittance except on party business'”. Had I heard it out of context, my first impulse would have been to walk up to the preacher’s house humming the Internationale.

However, the context was in a sermon around the theme of festivity; the encouragement was always to be in a state of communal celebration.

I’d prefer to be always in a state of cerebration. Actually, I mostly am in that state. The thing is, that isn’t because of any lack of wish to be happy or joyous – I’d love to be able to do that when in company with lots of others. The trouble is, I’m just not constructed that way.

On a Meyer-Briggs personality test, while three out of the four categories are ones which I have historically fallen on either side of the dividing line (I’m currently borderline between INTJ and INFJ, though I’ve occasionally registered as marginally S or P), I always register as an introvert, and where the test delivers a percentage, 85% is usual. This makes me really very introverted, such that contact with groups of people saps my energy quite quickly, and I need time alone to recharge (it’s the other way round for extroverts). As a quite separate issue, I’ve always tended towards social anxiety from an early age (and this isn’t always a characteristic of introverts, though they often go together) and for the last 20 years or so I’ve suffered from Generalised Anxiety Disorder. The result of that is that in the presence of lots of people, particularly if it’s in an unstructured format, I feel ridiculously anxious and, truth be told, threatened. I can be in a group of old friends who pose no threat at all, and I still feel threatened.

This makes it extremely difficult for me to cope with communal celebration. In fact, it makes it impossible for me to enter fully into the spirit of the more free-form types of worship – the closer to charismatic things get, the less comfortable I become. That said, I currently attend an evangelical-charismatic Anglican church, which is a trial I put myself through every Sunday. I have reasons entirely unconnected with the style of worship for that, of course, but in addition I keep hoping that continual exposure will lessen the anxiety and allow me to be more festive, more celebratory in company.

In a previous post I mentioned that I seem immune to the forms of religious experience which are drawn from communal activity; while I suspect that having had a peak solitary mystical experience may have in effect burned into my psyche the pathways for that type of experience to the exclusion of others, a simpler explanation is that I’m very unlikely to have a significant religious experience when I’m very anxious (one of the things I find essential to the mystical contemplative path is the stilling of the mind and the emotions). Celebrations are loud and unpredictable and full of people, and all of those make me anxious.

The trouble is, I feel that this kind of exhortation from the pulpit is asking of me something I just can’t deliver, and making me feel that there’s something wrong with me – and this isn’t limited to church. Time and again I’ve found extroverts wondering why I shy away from large gatherings and encouraging me to be more outgoing, as if I were deliberately making a choice to be antisocial. I’ve become used to terms like “party-pooper”, “stick-in-the-mud” and “misery-guts”. It seems to me that the standard position of the extrovert is to think that everyone should be an extrovert, and if they aren’t either they’re deliberately being unpleasant or there’s something wrong with them. And it also seems to me that in order to be clergy in an evangelical setting, you have to be an extrovert.

And yet, as I understand it, around half the population are introverts rather than extroverts. Granted, I’m probably towards the maximum introversion consistent with actually functioning in society, but it seems to me that a church model which is going to make half the population uneasy and maybe ten to fifteen per cent acutely uncomfortable needs some thought, at the least.

So, why do I continue attending? Well, it seems that for the time being at least, this is where I can be most useful. Or, alternatively, this is where prayer has lead me, and it isn’t yet indicating going anywhere else. His ways are not our ways, it seems…

A couple of weeks ago, my church had a sermon and a small group session revolving round humility. I have a problem with humility (and no, that isn’t the set up for a joke like “When you’re this near perfect, it’s hard to be humble” or “Humility is my greatest virtue”). I have a particular problem being humble about things I have faith in.

It seems to me that the church generally has a lot of difficulty with this too. My link is to an article which criticises fundamentalists for too rigid an attitude and for being unwilling to consider even for a moment that they are wrong, but liberals and progressives are also guilty of this – the “Malleus Progressivorum” series on Unsettled Christianity starts with a complaint that progressives in that church aren’t prepared to consider other points of view, and much as I dislike the current move by eight “Biblical” churches in Fountain Hills to criticise the one church in town which is progressive, a close reading of the background does show that a conservative, literalist viewpoint is one which would probably feel excluded at the Fountains UMC.

And I write that despite wanting to say “And the UMC are absolutely right there, and the eight conservative churches should be excoriated”. Because liberal and progressive are so much closer to my own beliefs than is any form of biblical literalism. More “my tribe”.

My ultimate reason for wanting to criticise, though, is the thesis they are putting forward that progressive Christianity is wrong, something which you cannot espouse and still be a Christian (with “saved” and “not destined for the everlasting bonfire” close behind in the case of the conservatives). I try very hard to consider that there can be other ways of thinking about things – in fact, my last blog post considered a theological point of view which my experience tells me forcibly is wrong (namely that God might be depressed); it’s a thought experiment, suspending disbelief for a while in order to explore a set of concepts.

Note here that while I said “faith” to start off with, I’m now using the term “belief”. That’s important. To me, faith is largely an emotional commitment (involving, for example, love and trust) which has relatively little to do with logical argument; belief is something which I arrive at by considering things rationally and deciding what, on balance, I think is most likely to be the position. I try to hold my beliefs lightly (hence thought experiments involving another set of beliefs) and, as I’m a scientist by training, my root position is that any belief I have can be challenged by contrary evidence, and that what I believe for the time being should be whatever is, on my rational estimation, the most likely concept to coincide with what a situation really is. This is, of course, why I have difficulty with any belief system which starts out by saying that I need to believe in supernatural events.

That said, an insistence that I believe in the supernatural is merely an insult to my rationality, and does not affect my faith. I can, for the sake of argument, adopt the position that supernatural events may occasionally occur – and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest that someone else feels that, for them, it is essential that they do. I am interested in why they may feel that way, and open to thinking, at least for a while, as if that position were correct. I like to think that, were I to be provided with some very good reasons for doing so, I might change my mind about the absence of supernatural factors in the world. In addition, when treated as a way of talking about things rather than a statement of truth, I’m fairly happy to talk supernaturalist – let’s face it, I sometimes talk about my computer as if (in animistic fashion) it had consciousness of its own (a mischievous and malevolent one, on the whole). It may even be that some part of my subconscious actually believes that it has – but, it seems, that doesn’t apply to supernatural causes more generally.

I have not always been so epistemically humble. The 9 year old Chris who had worked out to his satisfaction that there were no supernatural entities and that scripture was on the same level as fables by Hans Christian Andersen (and somewhat less entertaining) was keen to share this indupitable truth with all and sundry, and to persuade them of the true state of affairs. Had he not, at 15, had a peak mystical experience which failed utterly to fit within a scientific-rationalist-materialist-reductionist framework, he might well have gone on to produce an adult in the mould of (say) Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens.

That, however, was largely just intellectual arrogance; it went to belief but not really to faith. If there was faith there, it was unfounded faith in my own powers of reasoning.

Then came the “zap” which changed everything, and for those who have not had a peak mystical experience or some other religious experience of similar intensity, these come with a massive quantity of self-verification. Not only do you suddenly see the world in a radically different way, but you are automatically convinced of the rightness of that experience. Incidentally, I include “some other religious experience of similar intensity” not because I have ever experienced such, but because I now hold open the possibility that (for instance) the ecstatic group-based experience may have similar force and validity. I have in the past tried quite hard to find a way to various alternative expressions of peak religious experience, but have failed; I now suspect that this is a function in part of my own psychology (I am seriously introverted and have a tendency to social anxiety) and of the fact that the original experience has created or accentuated extremely well-defined mental pathways which are now my default.

As a result, for many years I was inclined to say, when pushed, that I didn’t need to “believe in” God or “have faith in” God, because I experienced God. I might have said (and probably did on occasion) that in the same way I didn’t need to believe in air, or have faith in it, because I breathed it and knew it to exist. This self-verification tends to extend to parts of my interpretation of the experience, and for many years I would have said that these were equally self-verified by the experience itself. For instance, once I found a description of this type of experience as being of a panentheistic God, it was immediately clear to me with massive force that that was the way God is. When I read passages by (for instance) Baba Kuhi of Shiraz or Meister Eckhart, or from the Oxyrhyncus papyrii (part of the Gospel of Thomas) it was immediately clear to me (with massive force) that they were talking of the same kind of root experience.

There is a potential problem there. Although in my memory the descriptions have referred themselves back to the experience, I can recall that my initial reaction was that while something massively significant and full of meaning had happened, I lacked language to express it. I have to enquire whether, had I found some other descriptive language, whether I would have seized on that instead.

I can therefore now entertain the possibility that some of what I feel  is certain due to these experiences is stretching beyond what was actually self-verified in them, although it certainly feels to me as if it was, and continues to feel that way despite a substantial amount of self-interrogation. You will not, for instance, now find me saying in response to “Why do you think that?” the blunt “Because that’s how God tells me it is”. Apart from anything else, I have found that that is a complete conversation-stopper (which, actually, was one of the attractions – I have in the past shut up more than one doorstep evangelist that way). I might like to hear the same reticence from some who feel that “this is what the Holy Spirit inspires me to say”, which I anticipate may have something of the same force for them. I recognise the look in their eyes, but wonder if they may have stretched beyond what is basic to the experience.

Let’s face it, this was an issue which confronted Paul at an early stage in his ministry. In 1 Thess. 5:19-21 he talks about prophecy, and warns “Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good.” Thus, I will always try to find confirmation elsewhere, in scripture or in the writings of mystics or other thinkers, of anything which arrives with me with this self-verifying force, and in general if I’m trying to convince someone of the reasonableness of my position, it will be by quoting these sources.

But that isn’t necessarily how I reached the conclusion… and there’s the rub. I may be acting humbly but not feeling humble. However, as the only way I know to adjust my feelings is to use the “Act as If” principle, I think this is as good as I can get at the moment. Scientific Rationalist Chris can do humility these days (it was not always so), but Emotional Chris lags behind.

In my last post, I linked to a talk by Catherine Malabou (“Emotional Life in a Neurobiological Age”). I discussed one aspect of her thesis, that political apathy could flow from a communal depressive state, one which was so deep as to prevent all emotion. I have personal experience of such a state, from which I recovered about two years ago. The post went on to argue for a social gospel and for involvement by the church in every way possible, voting and voting for positive action for the needy as well as taking such action  individually and as the body of believers.

It seems to me that there is another interesting avenue of theological speculation which can be pursued here.

I keep seeing articles “pushing back” at progressive ideas in theology at the moment; there is a series ongoing at Unsettled Christianity on this topic (Malleus Progressivorum). One of the items which keeps coming up is the orthodox concept (in the Westminster Confession and in the Catholic catechism) that God is impassible.

By this, the concept of the “unmoved mover” is invoked; impassibility means that God does not experience passions. It is linked to the concepts of immutability (changelessness) and aseity (self-sufficiency). As my link shows, however, the concept is criticized because it presents a God who does not feel anything like as we feel; to quote:- Although some take this to mean that God is “without emotions whether of joy, sorrow, pain or grief”, most interpret this as meaning that God is free from all attitudes “which reflect instability or lack of control.”

The trouble is that in operative terms, for God to have an emotion means that something we (or some other creatures) have done has changed God, and that goes not only to impassibility but also to immutability and aseity. The “most” of this statement are therefore clearly wrong; if you insist upon absolute impassibility, immutability and aseity, you must also insist that God is without emotion.

I note here that Jesus, who was and is God in Trinitarian theology, clearly felt emotions during the incarnation at least (and, I would argue from the scriptural evidence, between resurrection and ascension). Whatever your picture of the historical Jesus, I think it has to include the fact that he was passionate in what he said and did. Can it really be that the “Cosmic Christ” Jesus with whom we are left following the ascension (in conventional thinking) has lost all power to feel emotion, and thus so has the triune God?

I have criticized this aspect of conventional theology before; I cannot see how a God who is unmoved by the actions or condition of humans can be said to be loving, or compassionate, or, indeed, jealous or wrathful. Nor can I see that such a God would be likely to answer prayer, unless operating by a set of rules laid down for Godself (which was the eventual strategy by which I continued to function during some years of a total absence of emotions other than a pervading sense that “everything was wrong” and a persistent hypervigilant anxiety). I place the blame for this conception squarely on the theologian-philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas who drew their ideas more from Plato and Aristotle than from the text of the Bible; I do not think the God concept of the philosophers is the same God-concept as that of the Biblical writers, with the possible exception of the preamble to the Fourth Gospel and some moments in the Epistles.

My base position on this, however, is not drawn from scripture, is that this is not how I experience God; the God of my experience is compassion personified, pained by every pain suffered by any created thing and at least as passionate as was Jesus, who according to Colossians 2:9 (inter alia) was the locus of the indwelling of the fullness of God and according to Colossians 1:15 the “image of the invisible God”.

However, my experience is entirely subjective, and I cannot expect it to be considered authoritative for anyone else; besides, there is always the possibility that this may be a mistaken impression, despite arriving with overwhelming self-certification as true.

Could it be, I ask myself, that God is in fact now impassible, and that this is the result of severe depression? This would, I think, fit with the conclusions of Jack Miles, who (in “God, a Biography”) wrote what I consider the ultimate consideration of the Old Testament as a literary work with God as the hero, finding God’s character to have developed and changed through the text and ultimately withdrawing from personal intervention; the logic behind this could well be that God became depressed – and who could blame God for that, considering the historical wreckage outlined time and time again through the Hebrew Scriptures of what, in the beginning, God had seen as good – or even “very good”?

There has been for some time now a school of theology which proclaims “God is Dead”, following Nietzsche’s statement “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”, though the concept originated with Hegel. I still remember the stir when my local vicar preached, in a service recorded for the BBC, on the topic (something which was one of the factors instrumental in my taking Christianity seriously as a potential language of description of the experience of God). Sadly, this was in the 1960’s and isn’t as far as I can tell accessible online. One of the things which is explained by this kind of thinking is, of course, the relative lack of action in the world of anything which might be called “God” compared with historical records. Peter Rollins, the most recent of this school, is inclined to say that God is “undead”, i.e. is dead but doesn’t yet know it…

There is also a recent book called “God is Unconscious”, which I haven’t yet read (so here’s another review). Only one of the two meanings is “literal” unconsciousness (the other is “having become part of the unconscious”, which resonates with Rollins’ thinking); literal unconsciousness would, however, provide another way of considering the silence of God which Jack Miles ends his book with.

I could, however, propose that God is neither dead nor unconscious, he is merely horribly, deeply depressed, and as such has become unable to display or to feel affect (emotion). Constrained by kenotic self-emptying and respect for the self-determination of God’s creation, there is perhaps nothing God can do beyond, perhaps, a subtle and almost subliminal insistence, as portrayed by Jack Caputo. When combined with a compassion and empathy elevated to God-like intensity, who would not be depressed? This would be another reason for the withdrawn character which Jack Miles finds developing during the course of scripture, at least until the New Testament (though I grant that my own conception of kenosis which I link to above is sufficient without the element of psychoanalysis).

Someone is no doubt going to say “That’s far too anthropomorphic, God cannot be expressed in such human terms”, possibly adding that it’s potentially blasphemous. Well, maybe – that would, after all, argue a God much like the God of the philosophers. But aren’t terms like “jealous” and “wrathful”, even “loving” or “good” also too anthropomorphic? Those are definitely terms used in the Bible, at least in the Hebrew Scriptures which form part of it, to describe God. Perhaps “depressed” is not too unreasonable an addition?

Perhaps, in our prayers, we should be expressing a little compassion towards God, some sympathy in this plight?

And, moved by it, we should do what we can to make creation (including the relationships of humans with each other) again something on which God can look and say “it is very good”.

Courtesy of a link from a post at Partially Examined Life’s facebook feed, I listened to a talk by Catherine Malabou recently. (“Emotional Life in a Neurobiological Age”) I don’t necessarily recommend listening unless you’re both philosophically inclined and reasonably comfortable with “continental philosophy” to be honest; I’m not really either of those things, but keep plugging away at PEL in the hopes that one day I will be comfortable with the more philosophical end of theology.

There are, however, some very interesting parts of her thesis, particularly for me. She is particularly interested in the phenomenon of loss of affect, i.e. people who develop an inability to feel emotion.  This is well established as a result of brain lesions and of epileptic absences, and she comments further that it can be the result of  PTSD or profound depression.

That is where my interest is piqued, as I have personal experience of being in this state, described by her, in which it may be that the reasoning faculties are completely intact, but the person suffering the condition is entirely unable to make decisions as they are wholly apathetic as to the result. I have been there, done that and, as they say, bought the t-shirt, and in hindsight it may well have been a subconscious self-preservation mechanism which finally tipped me over into it, as before that I was actively suicidal; after the depression (and or PTSD) became that severe, there was no longer any particular reason to prefer death over life (or, of course, vice versa), so I was relatively safe as long as I had a minder to ensure (for instance) that I did get out of the way of oncoming buses.

This may all appear of only historic interest to me on a personal basis, but she goes on to comment on the phenomenon when applied to a body of people in a political milieu; as she says, though I paraphrase, if the people can be persuaded to feel a total lack of ability to alter anything, and in addition develop an apathy towards the situation, then those ruling them have won unbridled power.

Looking back after our hotly debated recent election, it seems to me that this syndrome affected a substantial number of previous Liberal Democrat voters and workers between 2010 and 2015. If they had been anything like left-leaning, the idea of a coalition with the Tories was anathema in the first place, and thus even after being rarities for the LibDems and getting an MP of their party elected, as happened in 52 constituencies in 2010, their perception was that they just got a Conservative government anyhow. Why bother?

OK, granted the coalition did not do some of the nastier things the Conservatives will now push through, and did not cut as hard and as fast as the Tories wanted (which as per my last post would have been at a minimum unnecessary and more probably  have earned a total lack of recovery and calls for even more austerity). The left-leaning LD, however, was never looking for small adjustments in the direction of reduction of the welfare state, but of increases to it, not reduced taxes for the wealthy but substantial increases.  From their point of view, the coalition was a total fail.

Depression, the Church and the Social Gospel

In conscience, I cannot be other than a “left-leaning” Liberal Democrat myself.  I completely fail to see how it is possible to take seriously the agenda laid out in the Sermon on the Mount and in Matthew 25 and not to attempt to ensure that the body of which we are all, perforce, part, namely the United Kingdom, complies with the obligations to support the poor, the sick and the otherwise disadvantaged, to welcome the stranger and, well, just be civilised.

Don’t tell me that “the poor will always be with us” – perhaps they will, but that doesn’t negate the imperative to reduce poverty. Indeed, it seems to me emblematic of the depressive “we can’t make any difference” attitude.

Don’t tell me that this is the responsibility of the churches. Firstly, with single-figure percentages of regular attenders on Sundays and even less who take the absolute instruction to assist the poor seriously, they are in no position to do that. Secondly, they don’t even manage to do that for their own members. There should be no churches where there are regular attenders who are homeless, for instance – no church I know of has a congregation with less spare bedrooms than the number of homeless members. OK, I grant that if that situation were put right, there soon would be churches in that situation as news of their generosity of spirit spread! Here again, the depressive “we can’t fill the need, so why do anything” seems to me to come into play.

Equally, don’t tell me that this is taking from the individual and giving to “the government” as if government was something apart from the people; as we live in a Democracy, the government is not different from the people, it is the joint expression of the community. (If you consider, probably with some justification, that the government doesn’t express the community very well, the remedy is to revise the way in which we govern ourselves, not to stop it fulfilling a communitarian ethos – indeed, if you stop it fulfilling a communitarian ethos, it will become something other than an expression of the community). If you live in a community, or trade in a community, you should contribute to it. You do, of course, have a vote – unless we’re talking of a commercial trading entity, in which case you have persuasive muscle well beyond a mere vote.

Once it is established that you should contribute to it, given that you have a vote, it being a democracy, you will (I hope) vote for provisions which comply with the directions of Matthew 5-6 and Matthew 25 in any event, and if you are a Christian there should be no “I hope” about it. How, I ask, can you at the same time consider that the poor, the sick and the marginalized should be cared for and vote for an administration which does not intend to do this? I would hope that further than that, you would involve yourself actively in the political process, working for parties which would pursue a “Sermon on the Mount” policy. We are not, here, talking of “render unto Caesar” separation from the ruling power, as you are yourself a part of the ruling power.

If you do not do this, whether your psychological state is indeed the depressive, disconnected apathy Catherine Malabou speaks of or just a decision not to be involved, the effect is exactly the same as if you were indeed apathetic, depressive and disconnected. You will be contributing to rule by those who do not adhere to Jesus’ precepts.

This post is about politics; normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

We have just had an election. Well, actually, we have just had three, or possibly four, elections, as the Scottish and Welsh electorates haven’t voted anything like the rest, and the North East probably isn’t on the same page either. The Conservatives (fairly narrowly) won the rest, the Scottish National Party won Scotland and Labour (fairly narrowly) won Wales and the North East. The exit polls, which almost no-one really believed, were virtually spot on, and were nothing like the pollsters had predicted at any time before that. Except in Scotland, of course.

With a few exceptions, Labour didn’t so much lose the rest of the country (they lost hugely in Scotland) as fail to make progress. Everyone else’s gains were very largely at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, who have nearly been wiped out – share of the vote less than UKIP, single figure seats for the first time since the party was formed, and scarcely more than when, aged 16, I joined the then Liberal Party, of which I continued to be a member until a few years ago, when I couldn’t afford the subscription.

UKIP, on the other hand, gained massively, although not enough to increase their number of MPs from 1. I sympathise with their complaints about first past the post – it reminds me of my own complaints back in the 70s and 80s. Of course, proportional representation would at this point give them more seats than the LibDems, at which I shudder as a concept – but the principle is still good, it is a fairer system so far as parties are concerned.

What has happened, it seems, is that the LibDems have been hugely punished for the actions of the coalition government over the last 5 years, whereas the Conservatives (aka Tories), who were responsible for all its worst features, have not been punished much, if at all (apart from in Scotland). I’m sitting here crying gently into my tea and trying to work out how this has happened. Until those exit polls, I thought we’d be waking up this morning to another hung parliament with fewer LibDems, but still 20-30, and with Labour almost neck and neck with the Tories.

But I should have thought back to 2010, when the coalition was first formed. At the time, I said that the LibDems would probably end up reduced to the 6 MPs the Liberals had when I joined them. It isn’t much better than that.

Actually, I’ve been favourably impressed by the extent to which Nick Clegg and Vince Cable (in particular) have managed to curb what would probably otherwise have been even more horrendous attacks on our Welfare State and Health Service than have actually happened (and that’s to some extent why I was hopeful of a less thorough election disaster). It seems, however, that that message has completely failed to get over to the English electorate.

Why? Well, it has been popular in Labour circles to suggest that the Scottish support for the SNP would effectively be a vote for the Tories. In pure electoral terms, that isn’t really the case. Very few past Labour governments would not have governed had they had no Scottish MPs at all (I think 2, without looking back at the figures), for a start, and we could confidently expect that the SNP would support a minority Labour government and definitely not support a Tory one.

There, however, is where I think there’s a problem. Much as I would like the English electorate to be more radical, more communitarian and, yes, more left wing than they are, the country took a huge leap to the right when it elected Margaret Thatcher and, it seems, has never recovered. I think the average English voter, who is somewhere to the right hand end of social democracy, was scared that a minority Labour government supported by the SNP would be forced by the huge block of Scots SNP MPs which everyone predicted to adopt a “borrow and spend” policy. And they were convinced that that would be a huge mistake, having swallowed the lie that austerity is what is needed to get out of a recession (there are excellent articles showing how this is not the case, one of which I recently shared on facebook), and the other lie that Labour caused the recession (they didn’t, it was the banks – i.e. the people who bankroll the Tories and on whose boards a lot of Tories have been known to sit).

So they voted Tory in far more numbers than would otherwise have been the case, particularly in the south of England, which has not felt the brunt of the cuts so much as the north. Why would it, it’s the poor who have been targeted by the cuts, and the North is far poorer than the South?

Add to that the fact that UKIP are now collecting all the “Let’s get up the noses of both the main parties” votes (at least all those which don’t go to the Greens), and we saw a situation where, broadly, a large proportion of  the LibDem support went to one of Labour, Conservative or UKIP and UKIP also gained from Labour and Conservative; this squeezed the LibDems in all their marginals (particularly those with Conservative challengers where Labour were unlikely to gain tactical voters). As an aside, this proved the idiocy of the BBC’s “swingometers” – they kept on talking of a swing from Labour to Conservative where it was totally clear that both Labour and Conservative (and UKIP) had all had swings TO them, at the sole expense of the LibDems – it was just that the swing to Tory was bigger than the swing to labour…

And there you have it, a grin on Cameron’s face which has gone through smug and emerged the other side as something transcendent…

In more normal times, I might have thought “OK, in a few years time, the Tories will have made themselves even more unpopular and the electorate will be able to see how much better things were with the LibDems moderating their behaviour” and hoped the situation would reverse. Granted, it will be at the huge expense of the most vulnerable in our society, the sick, the homeless and those who cannot find jobs, which pains me beyond measure, but at least that way I could see a potential end. However, there are two things which militate against this.

Firstly, although it is still possible that the Tories could austerity us back into recession, on the whole it looks as if the economy is likely to keep recovering (absent something major such as my next point), and it will be very difficult for the LibDems to be able to point to how much pain they saved us all.

Worse, however, is the pledge to hold an in-out referendum on Europe. I earnestly hope I’m wrong, but I fear that this would go the wrong way, i.e. in favour of leaving the EU, and that Cameron would feel obliged to comply with it. I can think of no better recipe (other, perhaps, than another banking crash) to destroy the economy, probably for 20 years or more – and it would be a decision which could probably never be reversed. (Incidentally, I think that in the event that happened, there would be an immediate in-out referendum in Scotland on whether to leave the UK, and that would be the end of the UK – though I wouldn’t be very surprised to see that happen anyhow, given that Scotland is now very close to being a one-party SNP state and won’t like almost all aspects of Cameron’s policy. There’s a good chance that Cameron will be the last prime minister of the UK, as it won’t exist beyond this parliament).

Of course, I didn’t vote for this in any way – though this time I didn’t go out campaigning for the LibDems (not that that would have had much effect beside the national trend). On reflection, however, there’s only once I’ve ever voted for a winning candidate other than myself in any election, national or local (that was when a friend managed to take a second seat to go with mine on the Town Council back in the 80s), so I suppose I should be used to disappointment. This, however, goes beyond disappointment – it could be an utter disaster for the country.

I joined the Liberal Party in 1970, and spent over 30 years following that working for them and their successors the Liberal Democrats, standing for them and sitting as a councillor before I gave up on health grounds in 2003. In that time, they went from 6 MPs to over 60 – and now all the way back to 8. In 1970 I judged it the only place for a “sermon on the mount” social gospel Christian with a passion for electoral fairness to go (albeit I hadn’t necessarily worked out that that is what I was), the then Labour Party being largely full of quasi-stalinist trades unionists and closet Marxist revolutionaries. I still think it’s virtually the only place to go in England, the sole possible alternative being the Greens; the Labour Party is currently agonising about having being too left wing in its policies, where in fact it seems to have swallowed the big lies about economics I mentioned above, and not moved much from the Blair days when they were, frankly, “Tory lite”.

I find that I made a really substantial emotional investment in the party over that time, and the current situation makes me desperately sad for them – but it also makes me desperately sad for the demise of communitarian spirit in England. I don’t think it will recover, at least not in my lifetime.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope the next five years won’t, as a fear, completely demolish the country; I hope that by the end of it, the country will be as anti-Conservative as they were in 1997 and vote accordingly, and find again the communal ethos which created the welfare state under Liberal governments in the first half of the last century.

The other day, I wanted to check the location of the statement “If you love me, keep my commandments” (it’s John 14:15, BTW). Google is by far easier than my trusty concordance for such questions, and it duly gave me the reference.

What struck me, however, was that once I’d got past the online bible entries, almost all references to this passage were from or referencing Latter Day Saints writing. There were maybe two or three non-LDS entries in 20 plus pages. One from John Piper, but otherwise pretty much nothing from any other branches of Christianity whether Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, Evangelical, Mainstream or Progressive. (I should note here that I include LDS as Christian, despite their having some additional scripture, which is commonly a dividing issue between religions. I also include Seventh Day Adventist, despite their having, arguably at least, an extra prophet in the form of Ellen White).

Why is this, I wondered? But then a possible answer occurred to me; it is perhaps unpopular in mainstream Christianity because it suggests to many people a form of “works righteousness”. I’d just done some thinking about this as a result of a Bible study of Colossians 2. Now, there isn’t really a clear “no works righteousness” statement there, but there is this:- “²⁰ If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, ²¹ “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch”? ²² All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. ²³ These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.” (from Bible Gateway NRSV). There’s also the more or less obligatory warning against succumbing to suggestions that circumcision or keeping kosher are appropriate for Christians.

This prompted questions for the group such as “What might be the result of trying to base one’s whole relationship with God on rule-keeping…?” and “What convinced you that trying to live up to religious rules couldn’t change you on the inside?”. I stayed quiet, as it was clear to me that my input would not be what the group wanted to hear at this point (not least because I don’t think Paul wrote the epistle).

The trouble is twofold. The first problem is that the clear implication is that Judaism is “basing your whole relationship with God on rule-keeping” and “can’t change you on the inside”, and this is an outdated picture. A chain of scholarship of which E.P. Sanders’ “Jesus and Judaism” is the early high point has shown beyond any doubt that the Judaism of the First Century wasn’t the ineffective obsessive rulekeeping which it’s so often portrayed as in conservative circles, based on Paul’s commentary in Romans 1-8. It wasn’t that in the first century, and it hasn’t been that in any century since, though it must be granted that there are probably individuals and groups within Judaism for which it is actually no more than that.

Sanders and those following him in the “new Perspective on Paul” have, I think, shown very clearly that the basis of Judaism then was “covenantal nomism”. The covenant (land and favoured status) is given to the chosen people as a free gift, and the Law is also given as a gift, to be followed as evidence of and a practical form of gratitude and love for God in return. Granted, widespread failure to follow the Law results in episode after episode of disaster for the people of God recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, but following the Law is not the precondition, it’s the way in which you display that you individually are within the covenant, and in which you contribute to the collective faithfulness which will, it is hoped, bring about the reign of God on earth. The formula is therefore gift given (grace) followed by belief, love and trust, followed by the evidence of that in behaviour.

This is pretty much exactly the model which Christian theology has put forward as the model for Christian belief, extracting this from Paul’s words primarily in Romans and Galatians; receive by grace forgiveness of sin, have faith in Christ, proceed in the path of sanctification by acting out that faith. OK, some say “believe and you will be saved”, putting belief first, with considerable scriptural authority, but it is just possible that Calvin was right, and that the ability to do that is given by grace (and I say that as someone for whom the name “Calvin” is near to swearing…); the logic is that to believe first is an action, and no action can be sufficient in the hard line “faith not works” climate of Reformed theology.

I don’t remotely espouse that; I take Jesus as having confirmed that he came to save everyone. I assume the effort to have been a success. However you get there, though, it remains an act of grace, unmerited and not earned. As does the election of the descendants of Abraham and Jacob as the chosen people…

To deny that is, I think, adding insult to injury following the lamentable history of Christianity’s treatment of the Jews.

On analysis, I come to the conclusion that the only substantive difference between Paul’s position and that of the Judaism of the time is that whereas Judaism asked for faith in God’s promise to Abraham, evidenced by following the covenant given to Moses, Paul asks for faith in God’s promise via Christ Jesus, evidenced by the fruits of the Spirit. Where Paul appears dead set against following kosher rules and circumcision, it isn’t because this is damaging as such, it’s because it shouldn’t be regarded as either something which is necessary or as something which “buys” justification in God’s eyes.

So, why do the LDS like the passage so much? Well, I might suggest that it’s because they also have a large body of rules and regulations which they follow. It’s not uncommon to find fundamentalist and evangelical Christians criticising them also as being a religion of “works justification”. Maybe so, maybe not – let’s look at my second problem with a negative view of actions.

Actions do, of course, proverbially speak louder than words. Paul himself considers that works will naturally flow from accepting Christ, and James suggests, entirely rightly, that “faith without works is dead”. Indeed, it is probably not unreasonable to suggest that whatever you may say you believe, what you actually believe is evidenced by what you do.

There’s more, however. There is now plenty of psychological literature to back up the proposal that acting as if you believe something has a tendency to produce a change in beliefs to match the actions; the “act as if” principle is a major cornerstone of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. In Twelve Step, a common catch phrase is “You’ve got to fake it to make it”, and curiously that does seem to work, not in a guaranteed way, but as at least a strong tendency.

Returning to Judaism, but modern Judaism this time, I find from long discussions with Jewish friends, of whichever flavour (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist) that the long list of things which one is expected to do or not to do in order to be faithfully Jewish are, firstly, looked on very much as expressions of faith (I love God, God commands that I do this, so I do it as an expression of that love – very much in line with John 14:15). They are definitely not looked on as something which has to be performed in order to win favour, whether that be eternal life or something else (forgiveness of sin is not really on the radar there; there is a system within Judaism to deal with that, even absent the Temple and its sacrificial system); they are however, looked on as something which contributes to the communal good and the possible full expression of messianic hopes. Put simply, if you ignore the Law, you’re not excluded from Judaism or from God’s election of you as one of the chosen people, but you’re not a good team player and may be contributing to a losing streak for the team…

There is also substantial anecdotal evidence that actually performing these “mitzvot” (which translates better as “blessings” than as “commandments”) deepens faith in and love of God. You’d expect this, given the “act as if” principle.

So, I conclude, LDS are probably finding the same principle at work, though I’m not aware that they have quite the same view of the “not a good team player” aspect. I’d expect the same to be true of other Christian branches which stress activities (“praxis”), such as Catholics and Orthodox.

The other really popular passage to quote here is, of course, James 2:14-26, from which I quote ^{14 “}What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? ¹⁵ If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, ¹⁶ and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? ¹⁷ So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (from Bible Gateway NRSV). This is, of course, dear to my heart; love your neighbour is next to loving God and is the greatest practical expression of that. However, observance (praxis) which is directed purely at actions pleasing to God but not clearly having a beneficial effect on one’s neighbour is also a valid form of expressing ones love for and gratitude towards God.

There’s time for both in  my life.

I couldn’t resist the title of “In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being” by Clayton & Peacock, not least because it had a title I wanted for my own writing, once I’ve dragooned that into something book shaped, rather than oversized blog posts. “Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World” looked good as well.

It didn’t disappoint, save for a couple of niggles, one of them admittedly a fairly big niggle. It’s a book for the student rather than the general reader, it seems to me, but is at the accessible end of that spectrum. It contains a set of essays by various extremely qualified authors, setting out a variety of views of how panentheism can be combined with a varyingly orthodox Christianity and in some cases with some features of modern science, in particular emergence theory; there are sections from an Eastern Orthodox point of view and from a more Western one, showing that the Orthodox tradition has far less trouble with panentheism than do the Western (Catholic and Protestant) streams of thought. I’ll come back to that in a moment.

My smaller niggle came from the piece by Celia E. Deane-Drummond, linking panentheism to the Wisdom tradition (and in particular the creation account in Proverbs 8:22-31). She rightly links this with the language of the preamble to the Fourth Gospel, equating Wisdom (Sophia) with Word (Logos) but fails to advert to what I consider the glaringly obvious connection between the two in the work of Philo of Alexandria, who so far as I can see made this leap sometime in the first 40 years of the first century, i.e. before any of the texts of the New Testament were written, even taking the earliest fancied dates of conservative scholars. Instead, she quotes a number of scholars who also do not seem to have made this connection. I would love to be able to point to a popular level discussion of Philo’s work, but I do not know of one.

My larger niggle is that nowhere in the book is a link made with mysticism, and indeed Philip Clayton expresses concern in his overview which ends the book that the use of panentheistic concepts should be grounded solidly in the believable rather than being understood as a philosophical flight of fancy (his own words are rather less florid). What he did not say was that panentheistic expressions flow extremely frequently from the particular mode of spiritual experience called “mysticism”. It is, in that context, not surprising that the Orthodox tradition is easier to harmonise with panentheism, as a substantial number of the major Eastern theologians are also identifiably mystics, including both St. Gregory Palamas and St. Maximus the Confessor, both of whom are discussed at length in the book.

Indeed, it is my contention, following Happold, that the mystical experience is of a fundamentally panentheistic nature, even if it does not always result in clearly panentheistic statements from the mystics. On this point, the discussions in “In Whom We Live…” around the issue of harmonising panentheism with the Western tradition are extremely instructive; the West took, early on, a number of theological positions which are fundamentally at odds with a panentheistic experience of God, notably stressing divine omnipotence and omniscience, transcendence at the expense of immanence, divine impassibility (i.e. God is not changed or even moved by occurrences in the world) and a spirit-matter dualism of an extremely strong nature.

All of these flow from a philosophical treatment of the concept of God largely drawn from the pre-Christian Greek philosophers. Now, I do not even think that the God-concept of the philosophers is truly harmonisable with the God described in the Hebrew scriptures, and I have my doubts about the God-concept described in much of the New Testament being truly in line with the God of the philosophers as well. If it is also not harmonisable with the actual experience of God granted by mystical experience, then I suggest that the philosophers have got it wrong, and have produced exactly the philosophical flight of fancy which I referred to earlier.

I appreciate that the mystical experience is a minority one among Christians (I think this is a pity, but the only reasonably tried and tested praxis available within the Christian tradition proper is ascetic contemplation taking rather a lot of time, absent a “bolt from the blue”, and few these days seem disposed to put in the hours and endure the discomfort of doing this – and I can hardly blame them, given that even then a majority seem never to achieve anything like a peak experience). However, it is well documented, and occurs throughout the history of the religion, including in Happold’s view SS. John and Paul and, if the Gospel of Thomas is thought authentic, Jesus himself. Needless to say, I agree with Happold on this.

I have something of a beef with theologians who ignore the characteristics of the mystic’s experience of God (particularly as it can be plausibly ascribed to the three most important voices in the formation of Christianity), but doubly so when those theologians are discussing a concept of God which flows so naturally from it.